Dec. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Liliane Bettencourt’s former
financial adviser was arrested today for questioning in an
investigation into whether those close to the L’Oreal SA heiress
took advantage of her diminished mental capacity.

Patrice de Maistre was arrested and taken to a Paris-area
prison to be held before being transferred to Bordeaux, his
lawyers said today in an e-mailed statement.

The arrest was “coercive, destabilizing and upsetting,”
the lawyers, Jacqueline Laffont and Pierre Haik, said. De
Maistre had written to the investigators offering to come in
voluntarily, making the arrest “singularly unjustified.”

Photographer Francois-Marie Banier and Martin d’Orgeval
were arrested at their home in Paris on Dec. 12 and spent two
nights in a Paris jail before being brought to Bordeaux today
and charged. Judge Jean-Michel Gentil is leading the
investigation into whether members of Bettencourt’s entourage
exploited of the 89-year-old.

Banier was charged with fraud, abuse of trust, abuse of
frailty, money laundering and receipt of stolen goods, Bordeaux
prosecutors said in an e-mailed statement. D’Orgeval was charged
with abuse of frailty, money laundering and receipt of stolen
goods.

Bettencourt was declared mentally unfit in October by a
judge who appointed her daughter and two grandsons to oversee
her financial affairs. Her lawyers are meeting with a judge in
Versailles, near Paris, today in a closed-door appeal to
downgrade the guardianship to a lesser level of protection.

Bettencourt and her daughter, Francoise Bettencourt-Meyers,
have been engaged in a longstanding feud over whether gifts to
Banier and others were the product of generosity or coercion.